First Soap of 2008!

Bramble Berryhas been testing a new house soap base for almost a year. We’ve been very hard at work formulating a high quality, economical soap base for our bulk soap users (bulk = purchases over 500 pounds at a time). After the tests below, I think we might be close!First, we test for clarity: this is a 1.5″ square cube of the soap. You can still read through it!

The next test is crafting ability: how evenly does the base melt? How quickly does it set up? How well does it take fragrance load? The answer for this soap is that it melted evenly, gave adequate time to craft with and took heavy fragrance loading.

Here is my first attempt at embedding the ducky pencil eraser (get your own at Giftapolis.com). It wasn’t so good – Mr. Green Duck wouldn’t quite stay down and ended up breached on his side. I used a slightly yellowing fragrance so the soap isn’t as blue-clear as it could be but it has good transparency.

Test three is the final product: how does it lather? Does it look clear? Is the scent sticking in the soap? I’ll keep you posted on all of that once the soap comes out of the molds and in use.After three breach-duck fiascoes, I finally figured out how to balance and anchor the disoriented duck on his head so that the duck shows up clearly and in an upright fashion when the soap is popped out of the mold. It’s the small victories like this keep me going.

I’ll keep you posted about the base. Wouldn’t it be great to get a super aggressive price for pallets of soap on the West Coast?

The best soap supplies on the internet are found at Bramble Berry. Click here to browse Bramble Berry.

Actually, if it ever you are giving it serious thought, please feel free to email me. Our town has a wealth of unused old factory space, much of it being renovated now to look better and they are giving tax incentives and whatnot to get people into them. Or at least for the developers at this point, but it’d be worth a look, imho. I don’t know the people involved directly, but as an accountant, one of my clients is involved in revitalizing one of the buildings and as a member of the fire department, I’m sure I can track down someone in town to talk to.

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